The guochao trend, referring to products infused with traditional Chinese elements–aka China’s ongoing cultural renaissance, is constantly shapeshifting and, in turn, significantly shaping consumer trends across the board. From fashion to food to tech to movies to… (underground) music?
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Guochao (国潮| guócháo, literally “national wave” but also meaning “hip heritage” aka packed with traditional Chinese elements) has been making, well, waves in China for a few years now. Ever since Chinese sportswear giant Li Ning put on a show, with garments boasting typical Chinese elements, that put guochao on the map during New York Fashion Week in February 2018.
The trend describes the propensity of young Chinese consumers to gravitate toward homegrown brands and products, particularly those labels that incorporate traditional Chinese cultural elements and styles.
Guochao has since gone through several stages: from the public’s preference for established Chinese brands, to the expansion of its scope to include hi-tech products, including smartphones, cars, smart home appliances and cosmetics.
Today, the trend has led to a surge in the popularity of Chinese cultural intellectual property (IP), according to major Chinese marketing consultancy Daxue Consulting in a guochao report released on November 28.
High Temper time to start fine-tuning the guochao narrative.
Second Hand Rose band lead singer Liang Long poses for a picture in 2011, wearing a jacket bearing the flaming red dongbei dahua (东北大话| dōngběi dàhuà or “northeast floral pattern” in Chinese, a traditional fabric pattern featuring large peony flowers). Guochao, avant-la-lettre. FYI: The man hails from Heilongjiang Province– in northeast China. Image via Hercity.com
Culturally Captivated
“Chinese youth are actively supporting traditional cultural elements by embracing traditional Hanfu clothing, also known as Han Chinese traditional dress, engaging with guochao films, and watching reality shows that explore Chinese heritage and archaeological discoveries,” writes Daxue Consulting in its report. This cultural revival not only signifies the growth of Chinese soft power but also introduces Chinese productions to global entertainment platforms such as Netflix, the read continues. This cultural shift has had a significant impact on entertainment IPs, cartoons, reality shows and movies.
An example of the latter is the summer 2023 animated masterpiece Chang An (长安三万里|
chángān sān wànlǐ, literally “Chang An is 30k miles”), which captivated viewers with its poetic portrayal of the Tang Dynasty (618-907). The movie received an impressive rating of 8.2 on Douban, China’s largest review platform, and captivated over 20 million moviegoers. “Guochao movies” such as Chang An use traditional storytelling to address contemporary social issues, an approach creating emotional connections with audiences of different ages, ethnicities and regions of China.
That’s movies. But what about music?
Our very own lifelong music maniac, writer and active supporter of China’s independent music scenes Rochelle Beiersdorfer–- who is pretty much singlehandedly responsible for The Temper Samplers—dives in to ride the wave.
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Rocking the Past
The birthplace of Peking Opera and the original turf for China’s rock ‘n roll scene, Beijing has a diverse music community. And when it comes to a country’s culture, music is an essential medium for expressing national character.
In 21st-Century Beijing, this is most evident within the indie music community. While the mainstream is currently ablaze with the guochao trend from fashion to food to hi-tech, incorporating Chinese elements isn’t anything new in the indie music world.
Integrating Chinese flare into musical compositions and stage attire has been present in the music community for a while. Daring to call them hipsters, we mean that lovingly, bands such as rock titans Second Hand Rose (二手玫瑰 | èrshǒu méiguī) were ahead of the curve by blending Chinese flavors into their music since the early 2000s.
Image: courtesy of Beijing-based artist Diner–who can be seen posing with her guzheng, an ancient Chinese zither, in this article’s featured image. IG: @kydiner
“With music, it [guochao] is something related to traditional Chinese music like guoyue (national music) or minyue (folk music),” the cross-cultural kid, indie rocker and guzheng virtuoso Diner tells Temper.
Strictly speaking, guoyue refers to a specific musical genre centered on symphonic orchestration using traditional Chinese instruments. The guzheng (古筝| gǔzhēng) is a traditional Chinese instrument that belongs to the zither of string instruments. #TemperTeachings
“But chao also means something new and fresh so maybe a little bit of what I’m doing.” Creating tunes that run the gambit from alternative rock to electronica, Diner’s music is a retro mix of contemporary genres and traditional styles.
“When I write music, I don’t do things on purpose like ‘I’m going to write [and] insert guzheng sounds’,” Diner continues when asked if she thinks her music is guochao, “I started learning the guzheng when I was six, so for me, it’s like a guitar. It’s always somewhere around me… It’s part of my life.”
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Switching Codes?
Even with the marriage of Chinese and Western musical elements existing in Beijing’s indie music community before it was cool, incorporating national and folk elements into contemporary music styles is still a rather niche concept.
For instance, none of the 11 bands that indie music brand MusicDish*China独立小炒 (dúlì xiǎochǎo) signed under its Fresh Out The Pot新出锅 moniker, the brand’s music collective born during the COVID-19 years, regularly sprinkle Chinese flavors into their music.
“I don’t think it is going towards ‘oh we have to incorporate Chinese elements.’ I don’t really see it,” divulges MusicDish*China founder Eric de Fontenay, an “adopted” Beijinger from New York, with the stipulation that he’s not fluent in Mandarin so not sure about lyrics.
Other interviewees for this piece, such as the unorthodox quartet of artsy rockers theairpaper空气纸, voiced that they’ve noticed an uptick in non-lao Beijing transplant bands singing in their home provinces’ dialects. Here at Temper, we’re of two minds if this could be warranted as guochao or if it’s simply code-switching.
With no distinct and universal benchmark for what guochao is in music, we’re going to go with that the interpretation of guochao’s presence, or lack thereof, is all up to the artists’ intentions.
With the jury still out on what qualifies as guochao in indie music, let’s step out of the shadows of the independent scene and into the spotlight of mainstream music. In a market where the dominance of chart-topping Western styles is blatantly obvious, the assimilation of Chinese flair into Beijing’s popular music begs the question of whether it would have any impact on the industry’s global recognition.
“There is no doubt that our pop music is still in a stage of rapid development, and we are always trying to learn from the style [guochao],” Xin Taikun, a Beijing-based sound engineer who has worked in the industry for 12 years, answers when asked this exact question, “Incorporating ethnic instruments in pop music, can make our music more ‘Chinese’ and open another channel for international exchange and discussion.”
To decode guochao, we will keep digging deeper…
Into the underground.
Edited by Elsbeth van Paridon
FEATURED IMAGE: BEIJING-BASED ARTIST DINER POSES WITH HER GUZHENG, A CHINESE ZITHER. IMAGE: COURTESY OF DINER
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